PAINTING ETAN-PAVAVALUNG

Etan Pavavalung（1963- ）

Master Graduated from Department of Theology of the Tainan Theological Collage and Seminary
Master of Fine Arts Institute, National Kaohsiung Normal University

AWARDS

Etan Pavavalung

Etan Pavavalung is a Paiwanese artist born in Davalan Village, Pingtung County, Taiwan.

Etan’s artworks are multi-dimensional, including poetry, prose, graphic design, painting, illustration for children books, engraving, installation and video work. He is also a documentary film director.  By way of documentaries such as “She with the Patterned Hands”, “Hands that Tell Tales of the Mountains”, “Brothers Who Sing of Love and Longing”, “The Fragrant Mountain Winds”, “Mountain Tribe and Sea Tribe”, Etan tries to create an alternative aboriginal visual aesthetic juxtaposed with a literary poetic perspective.

In his visual artwork, Etan excels at detailed and expressive painting to deliver his literary views and contemporariness.  The innovative visual art form he developed, “Trace Layer Carve Paint”, has been exhibited at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Pingtung Arts Museum.  He takes for inspiration the sustainable ‘trace’ that is hidden in the land, mountains, and nature and the repetitive ‘layers’ of slate houses that constitute the texture of civilization.  He then ‘carves’ out patterns and lines with chisels, and ‘paints’ with the colors that change with the seasons.  His artwork connects with ancient aboriginal wisdom and converses with Christian ecotheology while searching for internal harmony and artistic thinking in rebirth.

Etan’s “Trace Layer Carve Paint”

There is a Paiwan term, vecik, that can be approximately translated to “writing”. Vecik is the root of ve-ne-cik, which in the Paiwan language refers to symbols, embroidery, and engraving, all age-old methods that have been employed by the indigenous peoples of Taiwan to “write”.  Ve-ne-cik proves its cultural vitality through livelihood-related objects such as ornaments and utensils, embroidery on clothing and headdresses, and wood and slate carvings.  Vecik also refers to the eye totem, which often appears on clothing, carvings, and other visual mediums.

After Typhoon Morakot in 2009, Etan felt that the affected Indigenous communities in southern Taiwan needed to create a form of “modern writing” to rebuild everyday tribal aesthetics.  Since the typhoon, “trace, layer, carve and paint” has been the focus of his artistic vision.  It is hoped that the style of “trace, layer, carve, paint” not only presents a new visual art form but more importantly, impacts on the way that we learn to hear the Earth and its breath, the wind, and comprehend vecik in life and aesthetics.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

JOINT EXHIBITIONS

2013
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
200×120cm

Migration

Migration is a long road,
Need confidence,
Need a challenge,

The floating lonely flowers in memory,
Let my soul fly,
The sky above the sloped land,

Inner marking
The season that will never be forgotten,
We migrated into the unknown landscape.

The Formosa Wild Boar

Furu the wild boar took his family to find a place to live in the mountain forest and tried to coexist with nature and human beings, through the original picture book to establish children’s respect for the native land.

2013
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
50 × 60 × 4 cm

Eagle and Me

2015
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
80×60×5cm

Don’t Take too Many

2015
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
120×120×5cm

Mother’s Shell-flower

2015
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
120×120×5cm

Meeting in that Forest

I pray that when I wake up
I can touch a sky called innocence

I hope that when it’s dawn
I can ride the wind to discover an earth called eternity

In serenity, there’s breathing of the heart
There lies absolute purity
In tranquility, there’s the gaze of life
There lies the path of the wind

Between the sky and earth we encounter each other
We breathe and dance in their tenderness.

2017
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
80×240×4cm

Uphold

2017
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
115×145×5cm

Island and Ocean, Birds Sings

2017
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
240 × 120 × 5 cm

No Longer the Way We Dance

2019
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
60 × 180 cm

The Fragrant Mountain Winds

Those sights, those things
They record the sorrows and love of the migrating mind
I want to head up the mountains again
For my heart seems to hear
The sound of ripe and yellow millets in the mountains
In the music accompanied by divine birds
Bid farewell to the pain and memory of the disaster
Lingering in my dreams
The ever-fragrant winds of the mountains

2020
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
242×82.5x5cm

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